A few weeks back I mentioned that the British Arts Council, in a misguided bid to interest people in poetry, suggested including rap, rock lyrics and football chants as forms of verse. Now I see that this daft attempt to woo the young is also being embraced by the BBC.
To mark National Poetry Day next Thursday, BBC Radio is transmitting a programme called "The Nation's Favourite Poems" and has told listeners that they can nominate song lyrics as their choice of most loved poem of the past fifty years.
This being so, and given that two million people in Britain have bought Oasis's last album, it's highly likely that Noel Gallagher's Wonderwall will prove a far more popular choice than anything by Larkin, Betjeman, Hughes or Heaney.
So is Wonderwall poetry? Not by my definition, it isn't. It's got a hypnotic melodic hook, but the lyrics have no meaning whatsoever when separated from the music. This is true even of the elegant, witty lyrics of a Lorenz Hart or an Ira Gershwin: take the music away and you're left with words that were never intended to stand on their own. Indeed, calling a song lyric a poem doesn't exalt songwriting; it merely de values poetry.
Anyway, in my view many of the best rock songs have lyrics that are complete garbage. Have you ever tried mulling over the words of Do Doo Ron Ron or A Hard Day's Night or Satisfaction or (better whisper this) Astral Weeks or Moondance?
Disc jockey John Peel has obviously been mulling over the words of Teenage Kicks by the Undertones. That's his choice of favourite poem in a series of short BBC films featuring celebrities to be screened on Thursday. Traditionalists (those who love poetry) will be happier to hear that Jeremy Paxman has chosen Larkin's The Mower, while Patricia Routledge has selected Betjeman's A Bath Teashop. So will either of these be the nation's favourite? If Oasis fans pay heed to the BBC, I'm afraid my money's on Noel Gallagher.
STILL on the same subject, I see that an American academic has nominated Bob Dylan for the Nobel prize for literature and that this meets with the approval of the eminent literary scholar Christopher Ricks: "It doesn't surprise me. If the question is does anybody use words better than he does, then the answer is no."
A rather sweeping, if not downright dotty statement, but when I recall meeting Professor Ricks (who wrote a fine book or Tennyson) years ago when he was invited over by the UCD Literary Society. He was scheduled to speak on T.S. Eliot but at he last second he decided to talk instead about the genius of Dylan, who had just released his New Morning album. Dr Ricks vas especially entranced by the lyrics of If Not For You. Here are the first and last verses:
If not for you
Babe, I couldn't find the door,
Couldn't even see the floor,
I'd be sad and blue,
If not for you.
If not for you,
Winter would have no spring,
Couldn't hear the robin sing,
I just wouldn't have a clue,
Anyway, it wouldn't ring true,
If not for you.
No doubt about it, Nobel material. And the tune's pretty nifty, too.
CLEM CAIRNS, the man behind Fish Publishing, tells me that the judges for the 1996 Fish Short Story Competition will be Jennifer Johnston, Joseph O'Connor and Emma Donoghue, and that all you short story writers can now send in your entries.
Last year's competition attracted 450 stories and the twelve deemed to be the best were published in The Stranger and Other Stories, which, Clem says, sold out. This pleased him more than a little, as did the fact that two of last year's winners, Molly McCloskey and Eamonn Sweeney, have been snapped up by English publishers.
The prize for best story this year is £1,000, and you can get full details about the competition from Fish Publishing, Durrus, Bantry, Co Cork (tel: 027-61246).